Friday, 13 November 2015

In a widely quoted interview with
USA Today, Bernanke said that ‘It would have been my preference to have more
investigations of individual actions because obviously everything that went
wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm.’ He makes it clear that he thought some Wall
Street executives should have gone to jail. However, ‘ the Fed is not a law
enforcement agency. The Department of Justice are responsible for that, and a
lot of their efforts have been to indict or threaten to indict financial firms.
Now a financial firm is of course a legal fiction; it’s not a person. You can’t
put a financial firm in jail.’

Going after firms is precisely
what the Department of Justice has been doing in the aftermath of the financial
crisis. It was nothing new. For some decades, prosecutors have preferred
to go after companies rather than individuals, partly because of the alleged
difficulties in prosecuting individuals, but also on the grounds that this was
an attempt to change the ‘corporate culture’ so as to prevent future crimes,
The result has been ‘deferred prosecution agreements’ and even ‘non-prosecution
agreements’ in which companies agree to undertake various reforms to prevent
future wrong doing. Such agreements became the mainstay of white-collar criminal law enforcement. There is little
evidence that such an approach, including the imposition of heavy fines, does
actually change the behaviour of companies.
It did, however, bring in billions of dollars ($220 bn by March 2015)
and kept government housing policy, which required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
to buy ever-increasing proportions of subprime loans from the lenders, out of
the picture in any cases brought against the lenders.

In the aftermath of the financial
crisis, the Department of Justice brought many high profile case against
leading banks, but these were settled out of court, as they resulted in the kind of negotiations which were roundly
condemned by Judge Jed Rakoff. He described just going after the company is
‘both technically and morally suspect’, since the prosecutors can only threaten
to prosecute the company if there is sufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that fraud has been committed, and, if that can be
established then the managers concerned should be indicted.

Such condemnation from a judge
and from the politicians and media led to a radical change of direction
announced by the deputy Attorney General in her Memorandum on September 9th..
Sally Quillian Yates announced that in the future, the Department of Justice
will turn its attention to individual accountability,
since it is one of the ‘most effective ways to combat corporate misconduct is
by seeking accountability from the
individuals who perpetrated the wrongdoing’. She argued that this ‘deters future illegal
activity; it incentivizes changes in corporate behaviour, it ensures that the proper parties are held
responsible for their actions, and it promotes the public’s confidence in our
justice system’. Ben Bernanke’s remarks are certainly in line with the changing
views about law enforcement.

However, that is not the
fundamental issue concerning the past.
It would, of course, have been possible to bring criminal charges
against senior executives if they could be shown to have been guilty of fraud
as individuals, but the charges were always against the company. The real question is: if senior executives
are to be held accountable, then the
laws and regulations should be clear and of course in force at the time to
ensure that administrative actions or
prosecutions could take place. For
Bernanke to say that some senior executives
should be in prison implies that
he considers that it was possible to do under the regulations or the laws in
existence at the time, but that the regulatory authorities did not refer any
case to the Department of Justice nor take the administrative actions open to
them at the time or in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Bernanke was in a position to ensure that regulations
were in place so that senior executives could be called to account., but his speeches and the full minutes of
the Federal Open Markets Committee indicate that he did not see the risks in
the growth of the subprime market and weak regulation. Indeed, Bernanke seemed unaware of the extent
of subprime lending and its impact on the economy or even on the banking
sector. Even as late as May 2007, he stated, we do not expect significant
spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or the financial
system’. In June 2007, he announced a
review of the rules governing lending
practices and supervision. It was too
little, too late. Looking back later,
Bernanke admitted that ‘stronger regulation and supervision aimed at the problems
with underwriting practices and risk management would have been more effective
in containing the housing bubble. The
Big Five investment banks voluntarily agreed to be supervised by the SEC under
a special, undemanding regulatory regime. Inadequate regulatory frameworks and
an unwillingness to take action against individuals meant that senior executives would not, and
often could not be taken to task for their alleged misdeeds.

Thursday, 12 November 2015

I am delighted to be asked to do a blog piece on ‘BT at 20’, and also struck by an echo of
how BT started, around 1982. At the
time I was teaching at LSU College in Southampton. We never had classes on
Friday afternoons, and the Friday lunchtime custom of academic staff was a visit
to a local pub. On one occasion, I had settled down with a pint and a
ploughman’s at The Wellington in Park
Road, when Paul Gardner, our convivial HoD, asked casually, if I might be
interested in devising an undergraduate course in literary theory. Being young
and naïve, I expressed enthusiasm, and Paul said, as if casually, ‘Could you do
it for Monday?’ My weekend ended there, and on the Monday I gave him the
outline syllabus for a theory course. It went through a fast-track validation
route that Paul had set up, and by the following September I was teaching it,
as part of a new degree scheme. It was the first undergraduate course in
literary theory in the UK, and in due course (pun intended), it became Beginning Theory. On Friday last week, more
than thirty years after that lunchtime in The
Wellington (still naïve, but no longer young), I got an email from MUP
inviting me to do a blog piece. I had already agreed to do it before scrolling
down to the punch-line, which read, as I should have anticipated, ‘But we will
need it by Monday’.

Over the weekend, I got out my BT file from way back then, and took a look. There are several
readers’ reports on the BT proposal
from circa 1993, all of them pretty snooty about the possibility (perhaps even
the desirability) of writing about literary theory in a way that students can
understand. The idea for the book had come to me in 1992, when I encountered a
woman just outside Sussex University, on the platform of Falmer Station. She
was reading one of the two (postgraduate) student-directed books about literary
theory which then existed. She was in tears, and I had the distinct thought
that it must be possible to write about theory without provoking that reaction.
It’s a bizarre idea, I know, and (with the obvious exception of Terry Eagleton,
who instigated it) it never really caught on, except with (at most) half a
dozen people worldwide.

When I write, I talk
to myself (which is OK, so long as you say the right things). One of the things
I often tell myself is ‘It’s not extreme enough – make it more extreme’. When I
come back to a piece that I thought I had pushed to an extreme, it usually
feels more normative than it did when I was writing it, but (I hope) it never
just feels standard, run-of-the-mill academic normal. Being extreme in the
context of literary theory means using ordinary language, explaining fully,
finding the example that works, then working it all the way through, and never
pretending to be a full believer in what I only half believe.

Anita Roy, who was the MUP commissioning editor in the early
1990s, sent me the bundle of readers’ reports, saying that I should use anything
in them that seemed helpful. She came to LSU shortly afterwards at my
invitation to do a talk to the Humanities Research Group, which I had set up
with Dr Jane McDermid (now Reader in History at Southampton University). No
official letter had yet been sent, and I had assumed that MUP wasn’t going to
do the book. During the meal afterwards, at a pizza house in Rochester Place,
Anita Roy said something that made me ask in surprise ‘Do you mean you’re
commissioning it?’ and she looked puzzled and said, yes, of course we are. So
that was that - I’ve been with MUP ever since, and have never wanted to be
anywhere else.

The chapters began with the typed out lectures which by that
time I had been delivering on the theory course for several years. The period
of expanding them into a book is vivid in the memory. For over a decade, my
room in college had been spacious and beautiful, with a pair of lofty windows overlooking
the Avenue in Southampton. In the early 1990s – the era known in higher
education as ‘massification’ – student enrolment at colleges and universities greatly
increased. New staff had to be appointed, and my room, with several others, was
sliced into two. Over the summer I wrote in the corridor, listening to the
noise of builders drilling through to make extra doors and flimsy dividing walls.
I had the feeling that I wanted to be somewhere else, and by the time the book
was published in 1995 I had moved to Aberystwyth University.

Anyone who writes a high-selling academic book has to pay a price
– it is the sin for which there is no absolution. But when I lecture, and I see
people nodding with understanding, I feel that I can want nothing better. As a
writer and teacher, the only quality I value is clarity – as Ezra Pound said,
clarity is the writer’s only morality. I have no interest in accolades from
professors, and the ones I like come from students worldwide in emails. The
nicest always tell the same basic story – I was enjoying English, and then in
Year 2 we were hit by the theory course, and I was about to give up the subject
– tears are often mentioned – then someone told me about your book. There was
one email I wanted to have quoted on the front cover – it was from America and
it read in full ‘This book is the real fucking dope – I’m pissed my profs
didn’t tell me about it sooner’. Others come from readers of humbling erudition
– one explained the three transmission errors I had made in a single-line Latin
quotation – we silently corrected them, and I imagined the pain my Latin teacher
would have felt on seeing them. As we have gone through numerous re-prints over
twenty years, errors we corrected a decade earlier sometimes rise from the dead
to haunt us, going unnoticed through two or three reprints before we realise
they are back, and need to be weeded out all over again.

At a deeper level, revising
and updating a book of one’s own seems straight-forward, in theory, but in
practice re-entering the mind-set of a quarter of a century ago is nearly impossible.
I feel about for the way back into a certain line of argument, but am often defeated.
It’s easier to write a new book than to revise an old one, though I am pressing
on anyway towards the goal of the 4th edition. I’m sometimes asked how
it feels to have written a book that everyone seems to know about, and I say
that it feels nice. All I mean is that I like the fact that people know my name
– it’s as elemental as that. Sometimes I have to confess that I’m not the author
of illustrated books with titles like How
to Photograph Your Girlfriend, and I imagine that my namesake may
occasionally have to explain that he is not responsible for the faults of Beginning Theory. I remain extremely
grateful for the twenty-year support and friendship of Commissioning Editor Matthew
Frost at MUP, and likewise that of John McLeod, ex-LSU, and now Prof at Leeds
University, who is co-editor of the Beginnings
series. Being from Liverpool, my
lifelong ambition was to be a paperback writer, and I’m pleased that it has
happened. Also, I remain constantly optimistic that, as it says in the Beatles
song, ‘I'll be writing more in a week or two’.

Friday, 30 October 2015

No tricks, just treats from MUP this Halloween! Enjoy 20% off the above reads.

To take advantage of this spooktacular discount simply return your completed order form to our distributors at the address below, or contact them on +44 (0)1752 202301, or by emailing orders@nbninternational.com and quoting discount code OTH568.

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

To take advantage of this fabulous discount simply return your completed order form to our distributors at the address below, or contact them on +44 (0)1752 202301, or by emailing orders@nbninternational.com and quoting discount code OTH569.

Thursday, 22 October 2015

James Baldwin Review is proud to announce the publication of its inaugural volume. James Baldwin Review (JBR) is an annual, peer-reviewed journal that brings together a wide array of critical and creative work on the life, writings, and legacy of a groundbreaking 20th century American author, James Baldwin. Extending discussion of Baldwin’s writing and its impacts beyond academia is one of the core aims of JBR. Towards this end, the journal is published online, available for free, in an open access partnership between Northwestern University, Manchester University Press, and the University of Manchester Library.

Although
James Baldwin's work has started to receive considerable scholarly attention, and
though he is cited widely on the Internet in epigraphic and aphoristic ways, his
legacy has been far from secure. While there are smatterings of his archive at
the Schomburg Center for Black Research and Culture in New York City, for
example, the collection is less significant than his peers, including that of
Richard Wright, an African American writer with whom he is frequently compared.
Spurred on by two important collections of essays on Baldwin's work—D. Quentin
Miller's 1999 volume, Re-Viewing James Baldwin: Things Not Seen, and
Dwight McBride's collection of essays, James Baldwin Now, published a
year later—Baldwin scholars began to discuss in earnest ways how we might build
on this important work, while also helping to cement the author's place as a
central figure in 20th century American culture. JBR sprang out of a perceived need to
create an established forum for the exciting new scholarship that focused on the
author, as well as encouraging participants at international conferences on
Baldwin to develop their ideas (London 2007; Boston 2009; Montpellier, 2014; and
Paris, 2016), in well-written, jargon-free prose that might appeal to non-academics,
too. The aim of the journal, which carries echoes of The Henry James Review (Johns Hopkins University Press),
one of Baldwin's literary heroes, is to gather together new and established
critical writers in order to continue and develop the important scholarly work of previous generations, but also to look
afresh at his less well-known work and to reassess his continuing political and
cultural relevance.

It
was determined from the outset that the journal would be a collaborative
project; that it would involve a number of scholars and artists in order to
reflect the multi-faceted nature of Baldwin's life and work. Approximately six
years ago, Doug Field, a noted Baldwin scholar whose new book All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of
James Baldwin is fresh out from Oxford University Press, formed a
partnership with Dwight A. McBride and Justin A. Joyce, both with The Graduate
School at Northwestern University. After nearly two years exploring different
revenue models for founding and funding a journal, it became clear that with
funding from our respective institutions (University of Manchester and
Northwestern University), we could create our own model, thanks to the pioneering
approach to Open Access publishing both at the University of Manchester Library
and also at Manchester University Press.
The Open Access model was not only a financially viable model, it’s more
egalitarian ethos also fit well with the spirit of Baldwin's work, which
continues to demand attention, not only from the Academy, but from a wide cross-section
of society across the globe, which is a fitting tribute to this self-styled
transatlantic commuter.

We
are very proud to be able to announce our journal in conjunction with Open
Access Week, and to join the global community of scientists, researchers, and
scholars who are working to limit the barriers of access to knowledge by
publishing in Open Access forums and repositories. Publishing our journal under
a Creative Commons open access license allows Baldwin scholars, students, and
enthusiasts an accessible forum for sustaining interest in the life, works, and
legacies of this vital 20th century American writer.

For
a humanities journal, and specifically one concentrating on such a prophetic
and inspiring voice, our aim is perhaps slightly different than the core of
scientific journals utilizing Open Access to spread "knowledge". Opening
the doors of access to current research can also touch us in profoundly
emotional ways. As Baldwin himself once wrote, “You think your pain and your
heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It
was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very
things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever
been alive.” As Baldwin scholars, our push is to make as widely available as
possible the voices, views, and lives that move us, to empathy, to understanding,
to new ideas about ourselves, each other, and our places in the world. Words
that move us, in short, to action.

The inaugural volume of JBR
contains a mix of formal and informal tones, of experienced writers and new
voices. These essays are accompanied by an award-winning graduate student
essay, journalistic and autobiographical reflections, and a review of significant
scholarly works on Baldwin. Our first volume also proudly features new words
and new works to examine and explore, including an interview with Baldwin that
has not previously been published in English and an essay on “The Hallelujah
Chorus,” Baldwin’s largely forgotten collaboration with Ray Charles. Volume 1
also contains extended discussions of the importance of music to Baldwin’s life
and work, along with instrumental and vocal performances on the JBR website.

Thursday, 8 October 2015

Here at MUP we are getting excited about the release of Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan. And to celebrate, we are offering 20% off a selection of our women's history titles.

To take advantage of this fabulous discount simply return your completed order form to our distributors at the address below, or contact them on +44 (0)1752 202301, or by emailing orders@nbninternational.com, and quoting discount code OTH561.

Thursday, 20 August 2015

Tom Boland and Ray Griffin, authors of The sociology of unemployment have a new article in The Irish Examiner this week...Since 2012 social welfare in Ireland has been radically reformed in ways that are not widely known or understood. The Government’s Pathways to Work policy has been consistently linked to the Action Plan for Jobs. Yet, the relationship between welfare and the economy and the consequences of welfare reform for individual lives has been subject to very little scrutiny.

Thursday, 6 August 2015

One of the most fundamental necessities of a potential leader is the ability to communicate a political message to as broad an audience as possible. The construction of political discourse is the life-blood of the political process given it enables actors to persuade the electorate to lend them their vote. The ability to orate (deliver) a speech facilities this process, but also the rhetoric (content) of a speech must be appealing to the broader as well as immediate audience. As the speech travels into the broader demos, the orator may expect his/her impact to be felt amongst supporters and non-supporters alike. How these oratorical and rhetorical techniques function are explored in some detail in the edited collection Labour Orators from Bevan to Miliband, recently published by Manchester University Press (along with its sister volume, Conservative Orators from Baldwin to Cameron). See below for a special discount on both these titles.

The current leadership election is, of course, no different. The core strategy of each of the four candidates is to leave a positive impression upon the electorate, which in this case is the Labour membership and associates. The four contenders each have distinctive styles which they have used to try and convince the electorate to nominate them as their first choice. For example Liz Kendall has set out an empirical argument of how she believes Labour needs to change in order to address the concerns of the broader electorate concerning Labour’s electability. It is driven by the pragmatic need to embrace more closely the centrist voter, whilst arguing certain tenets of Labour principle may need to be sacrificed. Andy Burnham, in contrast, presents a more centre-left vision which accepts some changes are needed, however the core thrust of what comprises Labour values are vital in informing the future renewal strategy. This is similar to Yvette Cooper, however her style of delivery has a forceful edge which, potentially, could be problematic should she become leader. Finally Jeremy Corbyn’s rhetorical style aims to place a more fundamental interpretation of Labourism at the heart of Labour’s future, with a staunchly value-driven approach. Of these contenders, both Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn offer a distinctive alternative to the voters. Each have an entirely different vision of Labour, and how it can appeal. Burnham and Cooper each speak to the renewal strategies outlined by Miliband, however their distinctiveness comes in which policies they believe are deserving of the greatest attention.

Ultimately, these Labour orators are each striving to make an impression with asymmetrical results. Kendall’s campaign has not received the support which the Blairites may have been forgiven for anticipating. Similarly, Cooper’s campaign has not gained the momentum which a long-serving Labour cabinet member may have expected. Only Burnham and Corbyn have garnered sufficient prominence within the campaign for them to be in with a realistic chance of securing the top job. However, it must be remembered that second preferences are key in determining the outcome, and so it would be foolhardy to rely upon a single measure for anticipating the outcome. Despite this, Corbyn’s oratory has been most effective because his style inspires his audiences to listen. His is an epideictic style of oratory, with emotive rhetoric. Furthermore, he is supported by figures such as Owen Jones and Tony Mulhearn, which positions his rhetoric within a traditionalist left position. In concert with the £3 supporters, Corbyn’s momentum has developed to such an extent that it challenges the mainstream.

Looking at Labour oratory more broadly, it is unsurprising to find that Corbyn’s rhetoric rests within the Bennite tradition. The Bennite tradition believes in advancing socialist causes through direct action outside of the Parliamentary route. During the Benn period, this was through groups like the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy who, following the abolition of the Proscribed List in 1973, were able to mould the CLP’s towards a more radical interpretation of socialism. This is a very different tradition to Labour’s moderate left (such as Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot, Barbara Castle), who use the institution of Parliament to drive social change and promote a more egalitarian society.

Furthermore, the Corbynite perspective offers a very different interpretation of political power, which sees electoral victory as secondary to ideological cohesion. This conception of power is rooted far more within the demos, which believes the capacity to change society rests within the power of protest. This contrasts with Bevan, Foot, Castle, Burnham, Cooper, and Kendall’s belief that to change the direction of society towards equality necessitates political power expressed through the Parliamentary system.

As a consequence, although Corbyn’s message may be appealing to the current Labour electorate, it is unlikely to resonate with the broader electorate because it doesn’t include them. Corbyn’s conception of power is alien to the centrist voter who infrequently engages within the political process. However, given Burnham, Cooper, and Kendall each embrace ideological and rhetorical perspectives which have more successful traditions within Labour history, they have greater potential in making Labour electable again in 2020 or 2025. That said, whoever emerges as leader will have a very difficult five years ahead if Labour is to begin making its way back to the number of MPs required to secure a majority.

Special two for one offer

Purchase Labour orators from Bevan to Miliband and Conservative orators: From Baldwin to Cameron together, and get one FREE! Simply contact our distributors on +44 (0)1752 202301, or email you order details to orders@nbninternational.com, quoting the discount code OTH548, expires 30/09/2015.

Monday, 3 August 2015

Almost
every day we hear the question asked: why are people turning to ‘Islamic
extremism’? But in mainstream discussion, no-one mentions the elephant in the
room - or rather no longer in the room. The rise of Islamist politics, both
reformist and revolutionary, is a relatively new phenomenon; so what has
changed that has allowed this to happen?My historical and sociological research into immigrant politics, and
especially the politics of the Bengalis in London’s East End, leads to an
answer that few politicians want to hear. Islamism has been able to attract
people looking for an escape from the brutality and banality of capitalism
because the socialist alternative that would once have claimed them has been
systematically traduced and undermined. The rise of Islamism has been made
possible by the decline of socialism – which has been under constant attack
from the same powers who publicly bemoan Islamist dominance. (And this is still
going on, as the deliberate marginalisation of the secular and leftist Kurdish
movement in northern Syria so poignantly demonstrates.) The 2002 article in
which I first made these arguments has been

widely quoted, including in a paper
commissioned by the UK Government; but my

inconvenient argument is never taken
up or even discussed.

Of
course, the process of this political evolution has been complicated; and, as
the Bengali case history demonstrates, these realignments are a product of
developments in progressive left politics as well as of the apparent triumph of
neoliberal capitalism. Comparisons are often made between the Bengali East End
and the Jewish East End of an earlier generation. That Jewish East End nurtured
a tradition of active secular left politics, including strong support for the
Communist Party. The Communist Party was a dominant influence on the political
mobilisation of the early Bengali immigrants too, as it was in anti-colonial
and post-colonial movements more generally.But, as in other similar movements, the popular-front politics promoted
by the Communist international allowed socialist aims to be postponed into an
indefinite future while activists focused on the ‘first stage’ of national
liberation. For the people from East Bengal, their struggle for independence
from the British Empire, which took place when the immigrant community numbered
only one or two hundred, had been riven by religious sectarianism; but the bloody
battle for an independent Bangladesh in 1971 was fought in the name of a
secular socialist republic. The more radical left put aside their differences
with the nationalists in the joint fight for independence, but when that
independence was won, the left found themselves side-lined. This was true among
the East-End Bengalis too. The left had been so busy campaigning for
independence and organising day to day community work that their socialism had
been left on the back burner.

These
first London Bengali activists had built up a strong practice of grass-roots
political organisation, but it was focused on the practical issues that beset a
poor immigrant community facing increasingly racist immigration restrictions.
It failed to aspire to make more ideological change.

Meanwhile,
wider progressive politics was undergoing a cultural turn that downplayed the
role of economic forces and class conflict and prioritised the politics of
identity. In the East End, Black Radical activists from Race Today were
instrumental in establishing the Bengali Housing Action Group that helped
solidify campaigning along ethnic lines; and growing racism was countered by
Bengali youth groups. These mobilisations achieved real improvements to
people’s lives and to Bengali self-confidence, but they could not build bridges
between different ethnicities as had been so deliberately achieved by the
class-based politics of the 1930s. Nor could they address the fundamental
economic inequalities that transcended different ethnic groups.

Black
Radicalism opened a Pandora’s Box of separatist organisation, and as this
approach became institutionalised into political multiculturalism, these
different organisations were encouraged to compete with each other for portions
of government funding. Lingering traces of radicalism were tamed and
incorporated into the system. Meanwhile, the East End, like other immigrant
areas, remained a significantly deprived area, and the Bengalis remained a
disproportionately deprived group.

While
the turn to religion can be understood as responding to the need for an
ideological counter to a system that produced such deprivation, religious
identity has also been encouraged by multicultural policies that have
increasingly regarded people as members of religious groups and awarded
prominent roles to religious organisations and leaders. Some left organisations
have also been complicit in this, blurring the line between campaigning against
religious discrimination and actively promoting religious groups. The Stop the
War Movement and George Galloway’s Respect that emerged out of it allowed the
popular front put together to oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq not just
to eclipse much of their left ideology but also to strengthen political
involvement via Muslim (and Bengali) identity.

The
impact of Western foreign policy on Islamist radicalisation has been widely acknowledged,
but the growth of British Islamism preceded 9/11. Islamist movements were
already well established even before the boosts given by the perceived neglect of
the suffering of Bosnian Muslims and the publication of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. For young Bengalis
growing up with limited prospects, Islamist idealism and the international
brotherhood of the ummah (or Muslim
community) can be seen as an inspiring alternative to the pointless selfishness
of capitalist materialism – and an escape from the temptations of drugs and
gang wars. The mainstream reformist Islamist groups around the East London
Mosque have strengthened their position in the wider Bengali community through
a well-ordered structure and active participation in grassroots community-work
– aping the tactics of communist organisations. More
revolutionary groups have been active in colleges and universities.

The
inverse relationship between strong left movements and strong political Islam
has long been understood by Islamists, just as it has by Marxists. They
recognise each other as incompatible ideological systems, and they know that
both will compete for supporters from the same disgruntled victims of
capitalism. Among immigrants of Muslim background, just as in the countries of
the Middle East, the effective counter to Islamic radicalism has been
historically demonstrated to be a strong secular socialist movement. Try telling
that to David Cameron.Special 20% discountTo order your copy of Class, ethnicity and religion in the Bengali East End with a special 20% discount, simply contact NBN International on +44 (0)1752 202301, or email orders@nbninternational.com, quoting the discount code OTH547. Offer expires 31/12/2015.

Monday, 29 June 2015

Congratulations to Edward Juler, who launched his new title Grown but not made last week at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.

﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Edward Juler speaking at the event

This title is the first detailed critical history of British Modernist
sculpture’s interaction with modern biology. Discussing the significant
influence of biologists and scientific philosophers such as D’Arcy Wentworth
Thompson, Julian Huxley, J. S. Haldane and Alfred North Whitehead on interwar
Modernist practice, this book provides radical new interpretations of the work
of key British Modernist artists and critics, including Henry Moore, Barbara
Hepworth, Paul Nash and Herbert Read.